The project began with my love of cinema and wanting to give us – the audience – a bigger part to play in the narrative. What was distinct /exciting about Internarrative was how it brought together my illustration and animation with Machine Learning and the audience participation. Follow this link to my blog if you’d like to find out more!

My thesis explored ideas around non-linearity within the time and space of a narrative, discussing how the introduction of new concepts in Machine Learning might affect future outcomes. Download the text here.

The practical documentation covers the technical aspects of the project including my experimentation with Rebecca Fiebrink’s Wekinator. This involved creating a database of illustrated animation that the Machine Learning system then accessed. Using screen vision the camera detected the audience and their preferences in terms of narrative progression. See some images showing this interaction here.

In April 2016 I was invited to speak at the Interface Politics Conference held at BAU, Design College of Barcelona. The conference was an opportunity to debate speculative design as a tactic for socio technical interfaces.

The overriding theme throughout the manifesto is the idea of revealing something that is hidden from the user. From the point of view of the average technology consumer, there is an assumption that the user interface has their best interests at heart and exists solely to aid them from point a to point b. Our trust has the potential to be exploited by an interface with ulterior motives – hiding in plain sight. Speculative design offers a toolkit to interrogate the political, social and cultural landscape in which user interfaces exist. Speculative design could be the catalyst to a cultural re-think, stimulating more open and collaborative interface creation.

This was an exercise in visually representing key computational concepts; loops, objects, conditionals, arrays, variables and functions. I wanted to make something that would attach these fundamental elements to an illustrated symbol – much like Otto Neurath’s isotype’s – simplifying an abstract idea into a visual representation.

Screen printing the final symbols gave me an excuse to test out conductive inks, allowed the images to become interactive and connected the visual symbol with audio description and code.

Finding a design solution involves looking at the problem from the users perspective and acting out or role playing in order to understand the users experience. In doing so I hoped to gain an insight into what might be reconsidered or enhanced.

Paper prototyping has been a way for me to use my illustration skills to draw 3 dimensionally and ‘sketch’ out ideas for real world scenario’s – the physical computing unleashed my inner inventor too! Working with the Arduino and my 3D prototypes has been a great opportunity to gain live feedback.

In 2014 I had an idea to reveal the inner workings of a range of devices – such as the iPad. These paper illustrations were made for an animation to promote my iPad application idea for a Kickstarter campaign.

Three years ago tablet computers and smart phones had already become such an integral part of our day-to-day lives, now they have become so much more sophisticated, less glitchy but also much less accessible as a technological platform. Looking inside these devices can make them more accessible again and hopefully easier to understand. Bringing back some of the fun of hacking and the maker culture.

I created everything out of paper to celebrate the tactile nature of the project and tell a story that culminates in the iPad dismantling itself and exposing all of the components inside. The video was edited in After Effects, adding voice and sound effects.

This digital magazine, for the England Rugby Junior Supporters Club, is produced periodically throughout the season to offer an insight into the team’s progress with up to date news articles. The digital platform (html5) is a great opportunity to offer the reader additional content, such as photography or video content and replaying highlights of specific events. There are also opportunities for readers to get involved with interactive quizzes and competitions.

I’ve taken a leading role in the design and publishing of the Sky Sports weekly digital magazine. The ‘Sportzine’ was published through a custom html5 platform, allowing for animation and interaction, downloaded by thousands of Sky Sports subscribers worldwide.